How to get your request played!

Some people genuinely seem to believe that DJs won’t play their requests and thus you can read it in their body language when they approach to ask for a request. No doubt there are awful DJs around or DJs with oversize ego’s that don’t play requests, or worse, say yes to the request when it’s asked but then they don’t play anything that any guests have asked for all night.

For private functions such as weddings and corporate events however, most DJs, and certainly most professional DJs, will always try to play as many requests as possible, because their main aim is to try to make as many of the guests as happy as possible, because that will give the DJ a much more enjoyable night and also by doing that, that will keep the client happy and more importantly (from the DJs point of view!) it increases their prospects of picking up a booking from one of the guests at the event! They are in business like anybody else and always looking to take on more bookings, especially bookings where the prospective client has already seen/heard them.

But, and it’s a big ole butt, a good DJ won’t play a request that is likely to lead to a lot of people leaving the dance-floor, or, even if the dance-floor’s not that busy at the time- they probably won’t play a request that is unlikely to entice people onto the dance-floor. There are exceptions of course, but on the whole this is the attitude most professional DJs will adopt.

How to get your request played?
Simple common sense. You’ve got a lot more chance of getting your track played if you say to a DJ “can you play my track at some stage during the night” than if you give the classic line “I have to leave in 10 minutes, so please play it before I go”! because if you’re leaving in 10 minutes then the DJ has no incentive to play it! Especially if the request doesn’t fit in with the type of music that he’s playing when you ask, and besides, you’re just leaving yourself open to him thinking, well if the request was so important to you, why did you wait until 10 minutes before you leave to ask for it?

The DJs ultimate aim is to get as many people in the room dancing as possible and for as long as possible and so he has to try and decide which tracks are most likely to appeal to as many people in the room as possible as opposed to just keeping one person happy.

Simple psychology also kicks in; if you’re polite to the DJ when asking for a song you’ve got far more chance of getting your song played than if you talk to him like he’s a piece of dirt or being sarcastic. You’re then just giving the DJ a reason not to play your request.

Other good tips to NOT get your song played:

“What songs have you got?” “what do you want?” “I dunno, anything”!
“Have you got anything other than this?”

If the dancefloor is full and someone bowls up to the DJ and says “this is crap, take it off and play something else!” it’s just gonna result in two things; one is that they have absolutely zero chance of the DJ taking the track off, and second is that he’ll probably be more likely not to play anything that person might ask for, because the person is just showing how arrogant and inconsiderate to the other guests in the room they are.

When someone approaches me with the above inconsiderate, negative (and occasionally aggressive) attitude I feel far less inclined to play what they want than if someone is polite and specific.
I do wonder though what on earth goes through the mind of someone making such a statement – the dancefloor is full, but because they don’t like the song that’s being played, they seriously expect the DJ to immediately stop the song halfway through! It does say an awful lot about that person’s general character though!